Apartment for bustling family of six ‘like a factory’
Upgrades made in Outremont dwelling as fifth child on way
This big family with a baby on the way runs like clockwork in its Outremont 6½. Parents Nora Chenier-Jones and Shawn Bowen also run a nearby family-oriented gym called Vida Sana, which is like a second home. The apartment fit Chenier-Jones’s criteria when she signed the lease: It was on the first floor to avoid noise complaints from downstairs neighbours, it was in Outremont, and the rent was well under the couple’s monthly budget. But its state of disrepair has meant she and Bowen have had to do many small renovations, and for that reason, time is ticking toward another move. What’s a typical day in the life of this apartment? Nora: We don’t really spend much time here! Basically, we wake up at 7 a.m., and by eight o’clock everybody is off to school, daycare and work. Usually, we’re all at the gym until 7 p.m. We even eat there, and then we come back to sleep. What’s that one hour in the morning like? Nora: It’s a lot of rushing to get everybody ready. Shawn wakes up with the kids. I’ll sleep a little longer. He’ll get everyone to the table to eat. Then I’ll wake up and help Naomie eat, and Shawn will pick out everyone’s clothes. Once the kids have eaten, they go get dressed. Once they’ve dressed they put on their snow pants. One of us makes Antoine’s lunch. Normally, we cut it pretty close. Antoine has to be at school at 8:05 and we leave here around 8:02 or 8:03. It’s like a factory. Everyone wakes up and it’s rush, rush, rush. Do this. Go to the bathroom. Get dressed. Is there competition for the bathroom? Nora: It’s not that bad. Shawn makes the kids pee first thing when they wake up. They each take two minutes in there, one by one. After they eat, they brush their teeth and wash their faces. With your fifth baby coming soon, what kind of preparation have you done? Nora: Well, we moved the rooms around. What was once a bedroom in the back we’re turning into a laundry room.
The huge double room in the front used to be mine and Shawn’s with Naomie, the baby. Now, Shawn and I and the new baby will be in the smaller bedroom, and the big double room is for all four kids. Shawn: It’s huge. They’ve got so much space to run around. When we look at it now we say, ‘We should have done this a long time ago.’ How do they all like sleeping in the same room? Shawn: They like it. None of them wants to sleep alone. They’re so used to being with one another. When do you each find peaceful time for yourselves here? Nora: After they go to bed. Shawn: We’re lucky when that’s around 8:30 p.m. So we have a window of maybe an hour together because Nora is passed out by 9:30 p.m. And I stay up until 10:30 or 11. Nora: And for that hour we’re both up, we watch TV, or I answer emails. It’s not really ‘together’ time. We’re in the same room. What’s the story behind you finding this place?
Shawn: It’s funny because Nora signed the lease without me. I didn’t even see the place before she signed it. She said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, you’re going to like it. It looks bad now, but eventually you’ll like it.’ Nora: We used to live on the third floor near St. Joseph’s Oratory, but we didn’t like the building and we had problems because people below complained about the kids running around. So we said we have to find a first-floor apartment.
I used to live in Outremont, on this same street, and I wanted to come back here. Shawn thought it would be impossible, because our budget at the time was $1,400 per month. And I found this. Shawn: There was a lot to do. It was so grim in here. It needed painting. The floors were bad. Nora: The landlord doesn’t like putting work into her own building. But the price tag was less than other places in Outremont, and there’s parking in the back, lots of storage. I figured, okay. So you repainted? Nora: Yes, but I want to redo it, to make it brighter. We also redid the floors. How long did it take you to prepare the place before moving in? Nora: We had one month rentfree, so we used all that time. Shawn: We’re lucky enough that Nora’s mom helped, her dad helped, her mom’s boyfriend helped.
We also opened up the double room. It was separate rooms — and one of them was so dark because there were no windows, so we opened it up to be a big double room.
About a year after moving in we did renovations to the bathroom because it was falling apart. The landlord paid half. We put up some money ourselves to have the nicer tub, and to do a good enough job so the mould wouldn’t come back. And originally we didn’t have this brick wall in the living room, either. It was covered by Gyproc. And when we were taking down some of the wall in the bathroom we saw there was nice brick, so we exposed it. Anything else you want to share? Nora: We like it here, but because the landlord doesn’t put any work into it, it’s hard for us to see ourselves living here long-term.